This is a tough business, a gamble. Got to keep one step ahead of the trends. I dumped most of my life savings into an Andy Garcia bar. I’m an indie producer, who’s made a tidy sum with low budget, high-concept films. I was at a bar one day on the Upper East Side when I noticed lots of guys snatching the Garcia persona. They’d sleepwalk up to the bar with hooded eyes and slicked back hair, a few strands hanging casually across the forehead. Throw in a bit of stubble, lots of cologne, a quiet, measured tone, almost serene, but with a hint of menace.
They’d order a drink, carefully stick the tip of their index finger on the inside of the glass, and circle it as though it were a relic. They stared straight ahead, flashing deep pain they were trying to conceal. Sometimes they were in Euro suits, sometimes a sport shirt opened to the chest with some neck jewelry, nothing too ostentatious. Maybe a moderately sized ring, never on the pinky. Always a cigarette placed carefully between drink and change. At most, all they did was mumble.
As soon as women discovered this was an Andy Garcia bar – this was back in the late nineties – you couldn’t keep them out. They swooned over these cool, potentially explosive types, and the more women showed, the more Garcias turned up. Quench and Quaff quickly became THE bar in that area.
Obviously, at first this was a money machine. Then things began to level off. Some of the Garcias took to smacking each other around – but in a masculine way – out of boredom. Fewer women were showing up. A veteran bar owner told me the same thing happened to him when he opened a Richard Gere bar in the eighties. Soon as Brad Pitt popped up in Thelma and Louise, bye-bye Gere.
Then a former patron spotted me at a store and tried to scurry away out of embarrassment. When I caught up to him in the parking lot, he broke down and admitted he had been frequenting an Orlando Bloom bar in the West Village. I couldn’t imagine guys doing the Bloom identity, but that’s why this business is a gamble.
Now I’m wracking my brain, trying to come up with the next big thing. I could go low maintenance and create a Joe Pesci bar. But what kind of women would we get?
Joe Del Priore is a frequent contributor. Comments on this piece can be sent to: current@hudsonreporter.com.